First Team update Bolivia GAP 1

First Team update Bolivia GAP 1

So much has happened already so we thought we would just fill you in on the minor details. Right, where do we start? Miami. Those of us on the team flight had to endure possibly the worst journey imaginable – a nine hour wait at Miami International airport. None of us knew each other but it was soon clear that we´d have to get along….and we did. While some of us entertained ourselves with card games on the floor, others took to massage parlour (Ross) while Laura, Rory and Bash decided to scale the length of the airport. All in all, rather dull but little did we know that the “plane of death” was awaiting. Most of us were asleep, but the unfortunate few who were awake had to endure terrible turbulence and recount their terrible experience in a breathless babble, due to the high altitude in La Paz.

At last we arrived in our little Hostal Colon that has quickly become our humble abode! We´d met our Quest Leaders, Sarah and Pete earlier who on the face of it appeared friendly enough. However, we were rather alarmed when one of the first things to be mentioned was the fact that we would be having a Spanish exam that afternoon – not cool. Soon after, we were further seduced by the mention of the “S*%t Book” aka the Health and Sickness book (also fondly referred to as the “Bum Bible” and the “Crap Chronicles”) which every morning we are supposed to give a detailed account of our wellbeing, the more graphic the better. After our Spanish exam which was meant to test our linguistic prowess, Amy, Laura, Celina, Alice and Femke set out to explore Sucre, only to be met by a horde of water bomb yielding youths. We returned to the hostel shaken and damp. Luckily, Sarah informed us that we had been on the receiving end of a tradition in the run-up to the annual Carnaval.

So while our mornings were being spent improving our Spanish, which ranges from pretty fluent to the charity cases, the afternoons have been focused around sport. This is mostly football but on Tuesday night we were introduced to a popular Bolivian sport called wallyball (basically it is indoor volleyball) which most of us were absolutely useless at, not helped by the fact that the rules were constantly changing from game to game. However it was clear that the American contingent (Nico, Alejandro and Tyler) were leading the field and they let that be known! The most impressive was Shoe (zapato) who reminded us of the mad German goalkeeper Jens Lehmann with her spectacular/bizarre acrobatics on the court.

Last night was the first big night out, and what a night! The usually quiet Mette and Lisbeth came out of their shells and revealed themselves to be mega “fiesta animales”. All in all it has been a busy first few days, and we are all looking forward to a relaxing weekend in a hacienda just outside the city! Anyway, so far so brilliant.

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